


to where the water was

by laskaris



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Game Spoilers, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:45:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5389658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laskaris/pseuds/laskaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU inspired by CJ Cherryh's Russian Stories trilogy and additional Slavic folklore/fairy tales.</p>
<p>
  <i>"But I'll find a way to fix this somehow. I promise, I'll fix this." I wish-</i>
</p>
<p>A journey begins with a murder, an unquiet ghost, and a young wizard's impossible wish: it doesn't stop there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue: pockets full of stones

there is water in your lungs, and you cannot breathe: there is water in your eyes, and you cannot see, your hands clawing desperately for handholds you cannot grasp. the river pulls you down hungrily: the water has always loved you, but not like this. not like this. 

_(a wizard’s wishes come from inside himself. that is what your mother taught you. the desire to create a fate and the power to fuel it. be careful, for too powerful a wish will kill you._

_but there are wizards who don’t follow the rules, she warns you too. who make wishes but power them from the sacrifices of others. that-)_

***  
he threw you into the river. you don’t know his name: he traveled with the merchant girl, Rose’s, band, only saw him three times a year whenever they stopped at the village, and kept to himself. blond hair and a face like a fox. kind of weird. you didn’t think he was always that weird. you definitely didn’t know what he was: he hid it well. 

you started noticing maybe recently. you were with Sorey when he listened to Rose’s stories of all the faraway places she and her caravan had traveled over the past year, the glittering cities and all the people she’d seen, watching his expression of wonder. the fox-man was hanging around, too, and watching you hungrily. 

a strange hunger, too, like he wanted to consume you. not the kind of hunger you know how to deal with: not the staring gazes of the few strangers that come to the village for whatever reason and see you, _(not the way you want Sorey to shut up with his awful teasing poetry about your appearance and look at you in your flushed, half-formed dreams-)_

at the time, you didn’t know. but now you do. 

_(the most powerful sacrifices are unwilling. the ones who want to live more than anything. you would die for Sorey, but he is the only one you would die for, with a wish in your heart and a sharp-tongued retort on your lips for him to live. other than that, you want to live. the second most powerful sacrifices are other wizards._

_you want to live. you are a wizard._

_you don’t want to think about what kind of wish your death will fuel.)_

he caught you in the dark when you were on your way home. he tore your circlet off and threw you in the river. your wishes aren’t strong enough to break his, no matter how hard you struggle, no matter how much the river loves you, no matter how hard you wish because you will not leave Sorey alone- 

you cling tight to the lowest branch of the willow that grows by the river: the layers of your robes are heavy with water, like your pockets are full of stones, and you can only barely keep your head above water. you’re the best swimmer in the village, the river loves you enough to let you dance and run along its surface, but your skill and the water’s love does nothing against your fate. 

_(it was only supposed to be an errand. short, simple. Sorey wanted to go with you, but you told him to go home: you wouldn’t be long._

_you didn’t know that you would never see him again.)_

you are tired and you are angry, but you won’t let go, won’t let go, won’t let go-

The branch breaks, and the river swallows you. 

***  
when your mother was a child, her brother, also a child, went on a journey, a journey they only speak of in hushed slanted whispers. a child-wizard journeyed with the firebird who was also a woman with a sword: if this was a fairytale, he would have come home, tall and handsome, and married to the tsar’s youngest daughter, but this is no fairytale. he comes home alone, broken and bitter and untrusting, and never makes another wish. 

your mother grew up sweet and lovely, but a witch-child, a jinx, who bent her wishes inward, for protection. she never turns harsh and bitter, even with all the long years her brother never came home, even after her husband leaves her when he finds her book of wishes and realizes that she is a wizard, even when her brother comes home at last, changed from the laughing, bright-eyed boy she remembers. you are the joy of her life, and she has her brother, fragile and splintered, even when he takes you all and moves to a village in the middle of nowhere, away from the city. 

like your mother, like your uncle, you have the power of wishing, but your uncle won’t teach you, and tries to stop your mother from teaching you as well. you don’t wish much until you’re older and always at Sorey’s side _(and his unknowing wishes are strong and pure)_ , and then all your wishes are bent inward, to protect him, to keep him safe. your mother tries to teach you then, of how to make your wishes best protect without smothering Sorey alive, strangling him in a web of fate you cannot undo, because once you make a wish, you cannot take it back. but there is only so much she can teach you, half-trained herself, and your uncle cannot, will not, won’t - 

_(maybe if you knew how to use your powers, knew how to wish more effectively, you could have saved yourself. but maybe not. all your wishes are bent to protecting him, to stay by his side, because someone has to think of him when he only thinks of everyone else)_

what you know is this: a wizard’s death-wish is inviolate, and you send one last wish spinning unfocused into the dark, _I wish for Sorey to be safe_ , and your last thoughts are of him as the darkness and cold take you.


	2. chapter one: to those left behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Muse sits at her window with a candle and her book of wishes, and waits for her son to come home._
> 
> She doesn't know yet that he won't be, but soon. Soon she will.

Muse sits at her window with a candle and her book of wishes, and waits for her son to come home. The hour grows late, and it’s not like him to be quite so late - even when out with Sorey, getting into trouble as only two boys approaching adulthood could do. She remembers being so young, giggling at her needlework with the only friend she had as a child, putting wishes into every stitch she sewed for a gift: even years away, the memory brings a faint smile to her lips. 

As she turns the pages in her book, the words blurring together, she can hear Michael’s quiet steps as he moves around their small house, just out of view: he’s restless at night and paces the floor, haunted by whatever ghosts he brought back with him that never left. She can’t focus on anything: a shadow hangs over her heart. 

_(dread)_

Her fingers clutch the journal’s spine as she stands up - and then the force of the wish hits her like a lightning bolt from a clear sky, thrums down her spine, crackles across her skin with lambent light and she knows _immediately_ what it is. A wizard’s death-wish, unmistakable and clear, and she can’t breathe- 

_(there are only four wizards in the village that she knows of, and two of them are here in this room. She’d seen Sorey on his way home, alone, earlier that evening, and that only leaves-)_

The book of wishes hits the floor, forgotten and unnoticed: slender arms wind around her shoulders, and Michael is beside her in a moment, helping her to sit down. His face is stricken, and he doesn’t say anything. Her older brother knows, as clear as she does, that Mikleo is dead: not how he died, or why, only the moment when he had. 

It shouldn’t have been this way. It shouldn’t have been. She shouldn’t have had to outlive her son: she’d lain wishes to protect him all his brief life, seen him safely through the dangerous childhood years when so many mothers had buried so many children, and yet. Her eyes ache with unshed tears, but she will not let herself cry just yet. Not just yet: soon, but not just yet. 

Not until she finds her son.

“Brother,” she says, not entirely trusting her voice. “I don’t want to wait until morning.” 

“I’ll find the lantern.” he says, his eyes gone even more flat with grief. 

Muse meets her brother just outside the door and hands him his cloak. Night has fallen even more darkly: no one would be out in the village streets this time, and even if anyone was, the villagers are used to their strange coming and goings. No one would ask questions, for which she was silently grateful: she wouldn’t have to explain just yet. 

“Which way?” Michael asks, his voice barely above a whisper. Sixteen years and more of not making a single wish, of not casting a single spell, had atrophied his senses: Muse closes her eyes and reaches out for the traces of magic lingering, her heart breaking. 

“This way,” she says, and walks towards the river, tries to retrace his path. Even from here, now that she’s specifically looking for it - or it’s no longer being hidden, a voice in the back of her head reminds her - she can sense the tangle of her son’s wishes, unthinking and desperate. 

“Too many wishes,” Michael says, from beside her. “He must have been fighting something.” 

Muse has never known combat magic: she has never had to fight, while Michael knows more about it than she ever truly wants to know. But it doesn’t make sense: the village is tiny and sleepy and safe. It was why Michael had moved them there to begin with. What would Mikleo have fought, that would have killed him? “Fighting what?” she asks and can’t keep the edge of grief and confusion from her voice. “And why?” 

Michael only shakes his head, and she has her answer a moment later. Muse has never felt dark sorcery, either, not like he has, but the twisted wrongness settling into her bones, into her veins, threatens to take her breath, is too wrong to be anything else. This isn’t the magic that comes from night, for night was as natural as day: this was -

_(awful, crawling purity of purpose, to take and bend and corrupt and break, it whispers and whispers and whispers and even just touching the remnant she isn’t sure she’ll ever manage to get it out-)_

“...how could he hide from us?” Muse asks, softly. “How could we be so blind as to not see?” 

“Dark sorcerers hide, sister. They move and work in secret.” Michael says, his voice flat. “We’ve hidden ourselves for all these years. Who says one of them couldn’t do the same?” 

.Muse turns away for a moment. They hadn’t seen. They hadn’t known. And because they hadn’t known, Mikleo was dead. He was only half-trained at best: she’d trained him as well as she could, thinking it would be enough, but she was only half-trained herself. But the best she could give him wasn’t good enough. 

The light from the lantern bounces off a twisted, useless pile of gold, near the river’s edge. Even twisted and bent, Muse recognizes what it was: the circlet she’d given Mikleo as a baby, that he’d worn every day of his life, that she’d imbued protective wishes into. The spells are as shattered as the circlet is, and whoever had killed Mikleo had been more than powerful and skilled enough to have broken them without alerting her. 

But whoever his murderer had been, they hadn’t been able to remove the traces of their magic from the circlet: carefully, Muse picks up the mass, forces herself not to cry (not yet, not yet), and drops it into her cloak pocket. She has the scent of his magic now, and given time to work, could track him: whoever it is won’t be able to hide from her anymore. 

And she doesn’t need to ask why: she knows the rules of sacrifice. A wizard who wants to live, and she chokes on the bitterness of it, of knowing that her son was dead because she had been blind and she couldn’t teach him well enough. 

“...Mikleo went into the river.” Michael says, after a long moment: he’s always been hard to read, since he’d come home broken, but even she can see the dawning horror on his face, even only with lantern-light to illuminate it. Muse stares at him, as he holds the lantern up and points. Snagged on a broken branch in the water - and the river always ran fast in the spring - was a familiar shred of blue cloth: blue cloth and the echoes of his death-wish that still sing against .the current.

Muse sings the question to earth and night: the confirmation is immediate, and it brings her to her knees, everything sinking in at once. Her son is dead: her son is dead, murdered, drowned, killed to fuel a dark sorcerer’s potent wish. He’s dead, she’s outlived him, and she cannot even bury him because they’ll never find his body. 

Michael drops down on his knees beside her, careful with the lantern. 

“Can you...can you tell what either of their wishes were?” Muse asks, her voice breaking: Michael closes his eyes and shakes his head. 

“Not anymore.” he says, his voice an infinity of gentle sorrow that says more than his words or face ever could say anymore: he doesn’t say I wish, or even think it, she’s certain, but there’s that regret in his voice, and Muse clings to him and finally breaks down sobbing.  
***  
Her brother carries her home, like he had when they had been children before he’d left, somehow managing to carry both her and the lantern. ‘Somehow’, because he’s never been strong: he takes his turn in the fields, sowing and harvesting, but he’s still not a strong man. 

Muse cries at her seat in the window, by the candle that had burned itself out, weeps for what feels like hours into Michael’s shoulder. A hundred memories drift up unbidden: in the days after her husband had left, after she knew that she was pregnant, singing wishes to her unborn baby, rocking Mikleo to sleep in her arms and singing lullabies, the first time she had seen his face, all the years watching him grow, of all the hopes she’d had for him- 

Gone. All gone. An eternity of tears doesn’t feel like enough. Michael stares blankly into space next to her, dry-eyed, but whatever had taken his belief in wishing, had broken him, had taken his tears, too. He hadn’t wept since the moment he’d crossed the threshold of their childhood home: and he couldn’t weep now. 

Muse weeps until she has no more tears left, too tired to cry anymore that night: she never learns just how long she cried.  
***  
“Michael,” she says, in the hour just before dawn, her voice harsh with weeping. “Brother. I let you neglect Mikleo’s training, because I thought I could teach him well enough. I taught him all I knew. But I couldn’t - and now my son is dead.” 

Her older brother stands with his back to her, slender shoulders slumped. Even now, she can’t be as angry at him as she should likely be - he should have taught Mikleo how to properly wield a wizard’s wishes, yes, or at least properly taught her so she could have taught him, but she can understand the shape of his fear. Whatever had happened on his journey had broken him - and in his own way he was trying to protect them from wielding a power that had shattered him. 

Only, she thinks tiredly, his attempt to protect them had been no protection at all. She can understand the shape of his fear - but she doesn’t accept it. He had never asked for help - but she would have helped him, if he had let her. She could have come with him, and helped him, so he wouldn’t have been so alone - but instead, he had left her at home for years and years, and it was too late to help him by the time he had come home. 

_(and what does she have, for all her trying? a dead son, a broken brother whose sharp edges are jagged enough to make her bleed and growing sharper by the year. but she’ll sing anyway-)_

“Muse-” he begins to say, but she cuts him off. 

“And there is still another untrained wizard in this village.” she interrupts. Muse hates to give ultimatums, especially not to her brother - they were all each other had for a long time, until he went away and she married and Mikleo was born, and they were all each other had again. But she can’t let him just repeat the same set of mistakes - Mikleo was dead because he didn’t have enough training to protect himself. Her son - his nephew - was dead because he hadn’t given him - or her- the tools they needed, and if she didn’t push him, then he’d do the same thing again. “You know that as well as I do. And whether you like it or not, I’m training Sorey - and you will help me.” 

“...I can’t.” Michael says, after a long moment, his voice soft like dust. “I can’t -” 

“You mean that you ‘won’t’.” Muse retorts. “Is the idea of training me really such a burden?” 

This time, her brother flinches as if she slapped him. “That isn’t-” 

_And what do you mean, Michael?_ Muse has never learned, in all the years since, why Michael had given up magic and what had happened at the end of his journey: he trusts her the most, more than he trusts himself, and yet he has never entrusted her with that secret. “That’s what you say, but it’s what your actions mean. I’ll ask you again, brother. Help me train Sorey, or train me so I can train him.” 

“And if I don’t?” Michael asks, staring at her, his eyes unreadable. 

“If Sorey dies because he can’t protect himself, like Mikleo, I swear by Earth and Sky, I will leave you in this house alone.” Muse folds her arms across her chest. And she means every word of what she says - her child, her only child, was dead: if Sorey died too, because of a lack of training, her best friend’s son and dear to her almost like a son, then she wouldn’t be able to live with her brother anymore. Or speak to him, or look at him. “I’ll move in with Selene, or with Zenrus. He needs help up at the shrine, or a successor to take up his mantle, since Maison passed.” 

“...He has a grandson.” Michael points out, after a moment or two in which he has to close his jaw, obviously completely taken off-guard by her ultimatum. 

“...Sorey, serve _Perun_?” Muse asks, disbelievingly, and Michael has to concede her point. 

The silence hangs awkwardly between the two of them: Muse stares at her brother, and Michael stares back. She won’t look away, and it’s Michael that looks away first. 

“I won’t make any wishes,” he says, firmly. “And there are things I won’t teach either of you - you won’t need them.” 

“Like what?” Muse demands. Michael shakes his head. 

“Better for you never to know, sister.” he says, skirts around the edges of the secret like every other secret he carried. “But I’ll do what you asked.” 

His eyes are hollow: his voice is hollow. And she won’t leave him in this house alone to be haunted by the ghosts. Muse sighs. 

“...we still have to tell Sorey.” she says, feeling heavier than a thousand mountains, and Michael’s eyes widen for a moment just as someone pounds on their door. 

“...he probably already knows.” her brother says, and Muse closes her eyes tightly. Of course Sorey would, knowing without knowing how he knew. Of course he would, with how tightly their hearts and fates were bound: of course he would have felt Mikleo’s death-wish without knowing what it was. 

The pounding on the door gets louder: Michael doesn’t move, and Muse forces herself to get up to answer the door. Sorey stands on the other side of the door, looking exhausted and frantic and above all, lost. 

“Where’s-” he begins to ask, and Muse knows what he’s going to ask, or what he would have asked: but he sees her red-rimmed eyes, and the way Michael stands utterly still, and the fact that Mikleo isn’t there. Sorey is reckless and headstrong, but he’s far from stupid: he’s intelligent, and it wouldn’t take him long to figure out what it meant. 

Muse steps back, away from the doorway. “Come in, Sorey,” she says, and her heart aches: in a way, he’s all that she has left of Mikleo. It hurts to remember how Sorey had smiled, and how his smile would never be the same. “We need to talk to you.” and she swallows. “...about Mikleo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter was a pain to write because it heavily featured Michael and Muse, both of whom don't exactly get much screentime. And next chapter the plot will...slowly...get moving. 
> 
>  
> 
> Slavic glossary:  
>  _Perun_ : highest god of the Slavic pantheon, also a god of lightning and thunder and war. He was also apparently the divine smith, made weapons and the like.


	3. what the water gave us

For two years, Sorey has dreamed of water: cold and deep, drawing him into its chill embrace. By now, the dream is a familiar one: he wakes alone, and walks alone, and still finds himself turning to his left as if to say something, some observation or new fact he’s learned and has to remember all over again that his best friend is dead, that the space at his side and half his heart is empty. 

_(the loss runs deep, but he doesn’t let his broken heart dim his light: he sings his wishes pure and true, holds himself steadfast-)_

He scrawls the wish to protect into the book Muse had given him: she insists that he write down every wish he makes and every dream he has. Keeping track is important: a wizard cannot take back his spells, Muse told him when she began to teach him, and must be careful with the fates he weaves. His wishes are simple things, all to protect, and his dreams are of drowning. 

Muse frowns to herself as she bends over his book. The expression is out of place on her gentle face, though one she’s worn with increasing frequency. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, as she looks up from his journal. 

“I think,” she says, as she closes his book of wishes and hands it back to him. “That we have a problem on our hands.” 

“Eh? What kind of problem?” he asks. 

Muse sighs, and looks even more pained. “I think there’s a _rusalka_ haunting the river,” she says. “You’ve been dreaming of drowning - for years, yes, but Michael’s begun dreaming about drowning, too.” 

“...the drownings,” Sorey realizes: there’s been a mysterious series of drownings in the past few months. None of the villagers, but several strangers, men who were passing through for whatever reason and had washed up by the riverside. The last, scarcely a moon ago, had coughed up water, looking stricken, and lived long enough to whisper so beautiful before he died. 

“I’d look for it myself,” Muse says, frowning, and Sorey can tell that she really doesn’t want to pass this job on to anyone else. “But a rusalka won’t bother a woman - it has to be a man, in order to lure it out.” 

“I could go look for it?” Sorey asks, though he doesn’t entirely mean just look for it. He isn’t entirely sure how he’s going to do this, though he’s certain he can at least think of something, but the rusalka has to be stopped before it drowns anyone else and it has to be set free from whatever pain is keeping it lingering. 

_(A rusalka never died in peace: a rusalka never died free of pain.)_

“Don’t confront it.” Michael speaks up for the first time, looking up from his copying. Sorey’s never heard him be anything approaching forceful before: he wasn’t even sure that ‘forceful’ existed in the man’s limited emotional range. Hadn’t been sure until he’d heard him, anyway. “Don’t go near it.” 

“So only get close enough to it to see that it’s there?” Sorey asks, just to be sure he’d heard him correctly. “And then what?” 

“And then run.” Michael stares at him, as if he could see exactly what was passing through his head. “I know you can run, I’ve seen you do it.” 

“...right,” Sorey says. “Got it.” 

“Please come back safely,” Muse interjects. “I don’t want to have to explain to your mother why you’ve drowned.” Or see another boy die. 

“Don’t worry,” he says, and smiles brightly. “I’ll be back.” 

***  
Once the door closes behind him, Muse sighs.

“I’m worried,” she says. 

“Then follow him?” Michael asks, his quill scratching against parchment. 

Instead, Muse flips through her book of wishes, finds a blank spot and inscribes her wish. I wish- “I can’t,” she points out, sings her wish of protection over Sorey out to earth and sky. “Not if we want him to be able to find the _rusalka_. And don’t you think of following him, either.” 

Michael holds his hands up. “I’m not a complete idiot, sister. I won’t look for a _rusalka_ when I’ve given up being a wizard.” 

_You can’t give up being a wizard, brother. Just because you don’t cast spells doesn’t mean you’ve given it up._

“And I couldn’t tell him.” she says, with her head in her hands. There’s enough girls - and even a few boys - that have drowned in that river to have made a _rusalka_ , but she suspects who this one is. Or was, rather, and she wants to scream with the unfairness of it all. “I should have. But I couldn’t.” 

“He’ll find out soon enough.” Michael replies, setting aside the manuscript to step lightly to her side.

“Why now?” Muse asks, her eyes anguished. “It’s been two years. Why now, and not then?”

“I don’t know.” Michael says, and shakes his head: he doesn’t have an answer for her.  
***  
Sorey walks quickly along the riverbank, with a _leshys_ nipping at his heels.

The _leshys_ stalks closer, laughs in a voice that whispers with the wind through the leaves. Among the first things that Grandfather had taught him, on a winter’s cold night with Mikleo wide-eyed and curious at his side _(his left is empty and has been empty, for two years and too many days, and he knows but still looks for what won’t be there)_ , was never follow the _leshys_. Never follow it, for it always leads travelers and children astray. 

“Your bones won’t be anywhere near as pretty as his, little wizard,” the spirit says, and grins, its teeth sharp. “Nor worth so much. But worth more than all the worthless men buried at the bottom of the river, there.” 

“What?” Sorey says, because for all of what Grandfather had taught him, and all the lessons that Muse had tried to scrape together in the last two years - supplemented by whatever Michael had thrown his way, though Muse is his main teacher - he’s still not prepared to bargain with spirits. He’s a historian and only barely a fledgling wizard - he knows there’s malicious intent, here. Even more than a _leshys’s_ usual wont - there’s a message in here aimed directly for him, personally, but he doesn’t know what it is or why. 

“You seek a rusalka, little wizard, do you not?” the _leshys_ laughs, voice sleek and sinuous like scales across stone. “Further down by the river. Follow me, and I will show you what it is you seek.” 

Sorey knows better than to follow the _leshys_ \- he knows better, but he follows it anyway. 

For longer than he can remember, a willow tree, supple and green, has grown by the river, offerings to the gods left beneath its branches: it was thriving when Grandfather was young, and it had been there before his father, and perhaps even before his father’s father. 

“Look,” the _leshys_ laughs, dust across bone, and Sorey shivers. 

“What am I supposed to be seeing?” he asks: he knows what he’s looking for, but he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to see now. The _leshys_ only laughs, and laughs, and there’s a flicker of movement to his left side. 

“Look well, little wizard,” the spirit hisses. “Look well before you _die_ ,” 

“Hey-” Sorey begins to protest, but the spirit brushes past his ankles, matted fur scraping against his skin, and is gone: only the woodlands are its domain, and the river is something more. Magic swirls against his awareness, but not the shape of a wizard’s wish: _grief and anger and longing_ , borne on the turning of the tide. He’s never felt the presence of a _rusalka_ before, the drowned maidens, but - 

_(his heart aches-)_

Sorey shapes a wish, carelessly, and flings it out at the water: even Michael has to admit his raw talent, but bitterly shakes his head at his carelessness _(at him trying to wish to fix everything-)_ and promises that someday, he will regret it. He doesn’t care and wishes anyway, because he will make things better, somehow-

 _I wish you were free_ , he wishes at the _rusalka_ who waits, who lingers, who hasn’t shown themselves yet, _I wish_ \- but his wish is weaker than whatever keeps the maiden here, then whatever-

The mist and rain and freshwater spray coalesce into a slight shape, hazy at first but the details solidify as the _rusalka_ spins itself out of water, materializes to stand at his left side- 

_(a pointed chin, high cheekbones, cropped silver hair. delicate beauty. eyes that were once purple but now drained of all color, like everything else about him. a face that he knows as well as his own-)_

Sorey gasps: his heart aches. “Mikleo,” he calls, and has to swallow hard against the heaviness in his throat. It’s impossible, and yet- and yet-

_(a thousand and more memories. Fifteen years lived at his side, never alone, until-)_

He’d known how Mikleo had died: Muse had told him, that spring morning two years ago. That he’d drowned, and he’d been murdered, sacrificed to fuel some dark sorcerer’s powerful wish. Sorey had known, or at least could guess, how terrible his death had been, how much he’d suffered in his last moments, but he’d hoped, somehow, that his best friend could at least rest in peace. He’d hoped, but his hopes hadn’t been fulfilled. 

The rusalka wears Mikleo’s face, but there’s nothing of him in his eyes. Those colorless, blank eyes are fixed on him: there is nothing in those eyes, nothing save the turning of the tide, an endless roiling current. The water had taken him and the water hadn’t given him back, this was what the water had given them, and this wasn’t right. He can feel the _rusalka’s_ more than considerable power, unfocused magic swirling across his skin: not directed at him, but with the potential to be, and Michael’s warning to run echoes sharp in his head. 

Anyone else might have run, or tried to run: Sorey doesn’t , but instead swallows against the ache and steps forward, closes the distance between them. He knows Mikleo won’t hurt him, would never hurt him, even with what he knows of a rusalka’s nature _(pain and anger and sorrow and longing, all bound up in pure elemental fury)_ , certain that there’s some fragment of his best friend’s heart left behind. 

There’s so much he wants to say, and doesn’t know where to begin. “I’m sorry,” Sorey says, winds his arms around Mikleo’s slender, insubstantial form: because if he’d been there that night, insisted on coming with him on whatever errand he’d had and walked with him home, then Mikleo wouldn’t have died. “But I’ll find a way to fix this somehow. I promise, I’ll fix this.”

He will fix it: no one else will have to die. And- 

_I wish-_

_(he doesn’t think when he flings that wish out into the night: doesn’t consider the impossibility of fixing a rusalka, of fixing this. he binds their fates with magic, entwines their fates as strongly as they had been when Mikleo had been alive , I wish and I promise-)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Hopefully I didn't mangle Sorey too badly. He's really not a character I'm good at writing.  
> -Oh, look, the plot is actually starting to move more. Sadly this is the last of my pre-written material and I have finals, so it'll probably be a bit before another update.  
> \- Is this a universe in which Michael can actually make good life decisions? 
> 
>  
> 
> Slavic glossary:  
>  _rusalka_ : the spirit of a drowned maiden that haunts whatever body of water they drowned in: these deaths were usually violent, whether through suicide (such as being jilted by a lover/abused by a husband or lover) or being murdered. The ghost was not inherently evil, though really dangerous, and would lure men to drown them: they would also often pass on peacefully once their deaths were avenged. In the usual folklore, these spirits are always female: for my own purposes, obviously, not just women can turn into a _rusalka_. 
> 
> _leshys_ :: shapeshifting tutelary spirit of the woodlands: tends to lead travelers astray and kidnap children. While often considered evil, is also considered by other accounts to be temperamental and unpredictable, not necessarily evil. _This_ particular one definitely doesn't like Sorey though.


	4. the firebird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The Firebird wants to help. She intends to help. But intentions aren't enough." 
> 
> A sword, a boy, and a pact.

“I never thought that I would ever meet anyone more of a fool than myself,” Michael says, pacing back and forth: his steps echo hollowly. “But Earth and Sky, I was _wrong_.“

Sorey drips water onto Muse’s clean, dry floor, and tries not to sneeze. His clothes and hair are soaked completely through with rain and river water, and he is wet through to skin, cold down to his bones. 

“Michael,” Muse interjects, right when her brother is about to open his mouth to further object,. “This can wait a moment until he dries off-” 

“Sorry,” Sorey says, more than a bit sheepishly, as both apology and attempt to defuse the tension in the air: From the moment he’d set foot in the door - from the moment both siblings had laid eyes on him - the air had fairly vibrated with tension, so thick he could cut it with the ritual sword Grandfather kept in the shrine. Something was about to break, but he wasn’t sure what. 

Muse shoves a length of old, heavy cloth, as well as a much-mended, faded shirt and pants into his arms. “Put those on,” she says, “And when you’re done, then we’ll talk. While you sweep up the water you tracked in.” 

Her tone brooks no argument, just a shade under the similar tone his mother used: Sorey knows he’s somewhere past simply ‘being in trouble’, but doesn’t know which side he’s landed on. “I’ll be quick,” he says, and doesn’t waste any time, hurrying to leave the room, but he doesn’t even manage to leave the room before they’re arguing.

“If he gets sick and dies,” Michael says - and Sorey’s eyes widen at the uncharacteristic bluntness, even as his ears ring with Muse’s angry shriek of _Michael_ \- “At least that would be faster and more merciful than what he’s done to himself.” 

Sorey doesn’t understand what Muse screams at her brother - it’s not the ancient tongue of spirits, which he and Mikleo had painstakingly learned at his grandfather’s knee growing up, but it’s in a language he can’t understand. He doesn’t need to understand a word in order to know that she’s furious - or, when he peeks back into the main room for a moment, the utterly stricken look on Michael’s face as he stalks towards the door. 

***  
Sorey takes longer than strictly necessary to dry off with the cloth and change his clothing, trying to give Muse time to calm down - not that he has to stall that much, given how he has to wriggle into the clothes. They’re just small enough to be awkward, the shirt tight against his shoulders and the pants barely too short. 

When he emerges back in the main room of the small house - entirely uncertain of what to do with his wet clothes and the now-wet length of cloth - Muse is sitting in her seat by the window, with her needlework, two mugs, her book of wishes in her lap, and a broom by her side. 

“Put them in the mending pile,” one slender hand, the one that doesn’t contain her mug, gestures towards the small pile of clothes sitting out of the way: obediently, Sorey drops the pile to join the other pile. 

“Sorry,” he apologizes, again, as Muse presses the broom into his hands: it’s awkward in his hands, because he hasn’t had to sweep his mother’s floor in a long time, but he tries his best, sweeps the water off the floor. . 

“You shouldn’t have had to hear us argue,” Muse says, picking up her needlework again and setting down her mug. “But there’s no help for it now.” she sighs. “And as...abrasive as Michael was, he was still right - you’ve done something very dangerous.” 

“I know it was dangerous,” Sorey protests - of course he’d known it was going to be dangerous. “But I couldn’t just leave him alone. I promised.” 

“You bound your fate to a _rusalka_.” Muse’s eyes are fixed on him, and her needlework has fallen from her hands, entirely forgotten. “ _What did you promise my son_?” 

“I-you knew?!” Sorey closes his mouth with almost an audible snap, and Muse’s shoulders slump a little. “I’m not mad, I promise - just surprised.” he hastens to clarify, a moment later - because he isn’t mad, just surprised, and hopes that she hasn’t had to carry the weight of that secret too long. 

“I suspected,” she says, after a moment. “I suspected, but couldn’t bring myself to tell you.” Muse sighs again. “But what did you promise him?” 

“That I’d fix it,” Sorey replies, remembering the promise he’d made in the misty rain. That he’d find a way to fix it, so that no one else had to die, and- “That I’d find a way to fix it.” 

“And you bound your fate to his.” Muse says, her hands in her lap and her voice soft and dark. “You can’t simply fix a rusalka...even our fate-weaving has limits, and your options inside the bounds of possibility are just as limited. The simplest would be to avenge Mikleo’s death, but we still don’t know who killed him, and since it’s two years later, that’s likely not even entirely why he’s a rusalka now.” 

“I couldn’t just do _nothing_!” Sorey protests. He’s listening to what Muse has to say, of course he is, but it wasn’t like he could unmake his wish - and even if he could, he wouldn’t. 

“I wasn’t asking you to do _nothing_.” Muse folds her arms across her chest, obviously exasperated. “I only asked you to be careful. I would have helped you, or consulted with Zenrus, or any number of things if you just stopped and thought about it.” 

“Well, what’s done, is done. It’s not like I can take my wish back.” Sorey says, with a nervous half-laugh, unconsciously rubbing his head. 

“No, no, you can’t.” Muse, unlike her older brother, doesn’t pace: instead, she very calmly picks up her needlework yet again and resumes sewing, jabbing her needle through cloth with more force than was strictly required. Sorey winces, and keeps sweeping her floor. “What exactly did you mean by ‘fix it’? What did you wish for, in your heart, at that very moment?” 

“Um,” Sorey says, and tries his best to remember: between the shock of Mikleo’s appearance as a _rusalka_ and his own desperate, unthinking wish, the exact memory of what he’d wanted, at that very moment, was hard to hold onto. But he doesn’t need to remember in order to know the wish he’s carried in his heart since Mikleo had died, the wish for impossible things, the wish that he’d live again, be again at his side. “...I wished for him to live. That’s what I wanted, more than anything.” 

Muse’s eyes widen as she throws her work aside and grabs him by the shoulders. “You should be dead right now. Twice over,” she says, sounding utterly disbelieving. “ _Life for life_ \- that’s how those wishes work. That’s what it takes to power a wish that strong.” 

“But I’m still alive,” Sorey says, takes a moment to think about it. “And Mikleo’s still dead - he’s still down at the river. Does that mean it didn’t work?” 

Muse stares at him, her eyes wide and unblinking: he can feel her wish echo against his skin, as she sings a question to earth and sky. 

“Your fate’s a tangle.” she finally says, slowly. “You bound your fate to his, when you wished that he would live - but whatever Mikleo’s death-wish was is interfering. Instead, your life is shared with his - and since he’s dead, his existence is draining you slowly. Drowning you slowly, but he won’t live again. ” 

With those words, the enormity of what’d he unthinkingly done hits Sorey: how he’d nearly killed himself with that wish, and he could clearly imagine what would have happened if his wish had worked. Mikleo waking up on the riverbank, alive again, and while that’s the most beautiful thing he can imagine, less so was the realization that the first thing he would have seen was his dead body, and Mikleo would have known the price him living again would have carried. And while Sorey would have died for him, if he had to...that wouldn’t have been fair to Mikleo at all. 

“...can you break it?” he asks, slowly. Sorey still wants Mikleo to live, more than he’s wanted anything else, even more then he’d wanted to go explore what the Dacians had left behind after he’d read about them first years ago, but he can’t do this to him. He can’t do this to him, can’t make Mikleo drain his life away and kill him slowly - there has to be a way to break his wish. He’ll find another way. 

“I can’t.” Muse shakes her head, the light glinting off her circlet as she lets go of his shoulders.“Your wish is too strong for me: you made it with all your heart, with too much power behind it. Michael could have, if he was still at the peak of his powers, but he’s not anymore and hasn’t been in years.” 

“What options do I have?” Sorey asks: this looks bad. Real bad. This is the biggest mistake of his life, by far, but he’s not simply going to accept it: he’s going to figure out what he can do to fix it. There’s got to be a way to fix it, and even if there isn’t, he’s still going to keep trying until he dies: there’s still time, after all. 

“The only way to break your fate, barring any insight Zenrus has-” and part of Sorey winces at just how angry his grandfather would be when he heard of this, “Is for Mikleo to stop being a _rusalka_. Either we avenge his death or do whatever we have to in order to get him to rest, peacefully, or -” 

“What about the Firebird?” Sorey interjects, after a moment: he should have thought of it before, especially given all the whispered stories about Michael and the Firebird. Impossible wish, impossible quest: the Firebird, or so all the old legends and fairytales said, accompanied heroes and wizards on impossible quests. And if anything qualified as an impossible quest, trying to find another way to raise the dead would have been. “Doesn’t Michael still have her sword?” 

Muse looks a little more pained. “I don’t know where he’s hidden it, or even if he’ll let you have it, even though he’s broken his pact with her.” 

“It’s still worth a try, isn’t it?” Sorey asks, brightly, more brightly than he feels: Muse breathes in, once, resigned, and takes the broom from his hands, before giving him the other mug. 

“I couldn’t stop him back then, any more than I could try and stop you now. And if you make a contract with her, her power will be able to protect you, at least for a time, from the effects of your wish.” she finally says, and sighs, closing her eyes. “I’ll talk to Michael, when we’re ready to talk again, and I’ll get Zenrus to talk to him, too. Drink this, don’t make any more wishes until after you make the pact with the Firebird, and go home to your mother for now. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to her, but I will.” 

Sorey sips, and the familiar taste of _kvass_ , flavored strongly with the mint Muse favors in the version she makes, flows over his tongue. 

“I’ll come back,” he says, because there isn’t any other option: he won’t accept anything less from this impossible quest than Mikleo at his side, safe and warm and happy, and it would be worth every price he’d have to pay. Because he’d promised to come back safely, because Muse (and her brother) had lost too much already, because he doesn’t want his mother to cry, because- “I promise.”  
***  
Sorey doesn’t know just what Muse and his grandfather had done to get Michael to relent on the matter of the sword: but whatever they’d done, Earth and Sky had clearly granted them a miracle. Half a moon later, he stands in front of their house in the early morning just as dawn is breaking, nervous - it’s not as though he’s nervous to be there, but he really wants this to work. 

Michael sits outside, with a slender sword in a sheath across his knees: Sorey stops and stares for a moment, utterly unprepared for the sight of the man with a weapon, so utterly incongruous with his gentle nature. It’s strange enough seeing him with an axe to chop wood, or a scythe when he’s in the fields helping with the harvest: but those weren’t weapons. 

“I never wanted this for you.” he says, glancing up, violet eyes bruised-dark in his pale face. “I wanted better for you and Mikleo. But this is yours now, for better or for ill: I have no more need of her.” 

He holds out the sword to him, hilt-first, and Sorey takes it after a moment - and then nearly drops it, feeling the sudden surge of power beneath his fingers, all lambent light and heat and feathers, swirling across his skin. 

“Thanks,” Sorey says, after a moment, without entirely knowing what he could say. “I’ll take good care of her.” 

“Go inside,” Michael says. “You’ll need to make a pact with her - draw her out of the sword.” 

“Right,” Sorey nods, trying to commit Michael’s sparse instructions to memory: he was sure he could figure it out. “Got it, I think.” 

He’s about to turn to go, when Michael stops him. 

“When I was twelve years old,” he says, his voice quiet and shadows in his eyes. “I went on an impossible quest with the Firebird, and I don’t remember anymore what I was looking for. You won’t come back the same, Sorey - don’t make the same mistakes I did.” 

It’s a story Sorey’s heard in slanted half-whispers all his life, but it’s the first time he’s ever heard it from Michael himself. The man’s mouth twists wryly, and there’s a thousand thoughts rushing through his head, a thousand things he could ask, could promise, but instead-

“Why is she in a sword?” Sorey blurts out without thinking, and Michael looks startled. It’s probably not the best thing for him to ask, given what he’s about to do, but it’s been something that’s been niggling at him for a while. “I mean, all the old legends say she has to be caught. So why is she in a sword now?” 

Michael sighs. “To make it easier, I guess. She wants to help,” he says, and looks away. “The Firebird intends to help. But intentions aren’t enough.” 

A long moment of silence, and Michael turns away, begins to walk down the path away from the house. Sorey calls out after him, but he doesn’t answer, and just keeps walking. 

“...right, then.” Sorey mutters, and goes inside the house.  
***  
Muse’s floor is, as always, scrubbed shining: she keeps a scrupulously neat house and always has, for as long as Sorey has known her, habits which she’d passed down to Mikleo. 

“I-” Muse begins, as she lights a beeswax candle with a taper lit from the fireplace. “...Michael isn’t with you?” 

“No,” Sorey says. “He gave me the sword and left. Was he supposed to come back with me?” 

Muse sighs, heavily, and mutters something under her breath that’s too fast to catch. “Did he at least tell you what you’re supposed to do?” 

“Yeah, he did.” Sorey says. “I guess.” 

Slender, pale fingers come up to massage Muse’s temples, as the woman sighs again. It’s a very familiar gesture - one he’d seen Mikleo use a thousand and one times and more- and the empty place in his heart always aches a little every time he sees it. 

“You’’ll have to make the most of it, then.” Muse simply says, moves to light another candle. A wizard’s wishing magic doesn’t demand rituals, none beyond writing down wishes in order to prevent a tangle of conflicting fates that cannot be undone, but this is something entirely different. The shadows flicker across her face, casting her eyes into darkness. “Draw the sword and begin.” 

Steel on steel rings loudly in the silence of the room as Sorey draws the sword: it’s not a proper blade, he can see, but a ritual blade similar to the sacred blade enshrined to Perun in his grandfather’s shrine. Slender, silver, and shining. Sorey kneels in the middle of the floor with the sword, closes his eyes, and concentrates. Draw her out of the sword, Michael had said: He isn’t quite sure where to start, but he’s going to figure this out: it can’t be harder than it’d been to first get his unthinking, instinctual wishes under control, or at least not too much harder. 

He wraps his hands around the hilt of the sword and thinks, tries to hear the voice of the spirit inside the sword, calls out to her with all the force of his unspoken wishes, the spoken wish that had gotten him into this- 

**_Oh, hello!_** a soft, lilting woman’s voice echoes inside his head. She sounds almost tired, as if she’s just woken up from a long sleep and a distant dream. **_You’re a wizard, aren’t you?_**

“Yeah, I am,” Sorey says, though he’s not sure how to talk back to her, exactly. “And you’re the Firebird, right?” 

**_Yes, I am_** , she trills, sounding more and more awake as she speaks with him. Slowly, slowly, her image resolves in his mind’s eye: the Firebird is simultaneously a great bird with glimmering wings of fire that drip sparks and iridescent feathers that glow with every color found in flame, and a young woman with incredibly long, pulled back greenish-white hair that shades to reddish-pink at the tips, dressed in an ornate red-and-white dress, much more ornate than anything he’s seen in his life. **_It’s been some time since a wizard has tried to speak with me._**

“I want to make a pact with you,” he says, quickly, and adds, hopefully, because it really couldn’t hurt to try to be polite, especially with one of the greatest spirits that walked beneath earth and sky. “Please?”

 ** _Do you really?_** the Firebird asks, and sounds almost sad for a moment. **_The burden of my pact, my quest, is heavy. It isn’t something to be entered into lightly._**

“My best friend has been dead for two years,” Sorey says, though the words aren’t enough to contain everything he’s felt and feels about Mikleo. “I tried to wish him back to life, and my wish went wrong.” 

**_Oh, my!_** the Firebird gasps, putting a hand - and wing- to her mouth. **_Such true friendship between youths, to inspire such a wish._**

“Yeah,” Sorey says. “Please - I need your help.” 

**_Very well,_** she says, with all the weight of ritual, **_If you truly wish to take up this burden, take my hand._**

The Firebird reaches out a slender hand: Sorey takes it, and her skin _burns_ , searing him down to his soul. He screams: at least he thinks he screams, because pain overwhelms him, but he doesn’t let go. Everything is burning: everything is fire, he breathes in and every breath he draws is agony and ashes, and still he holds on, holds on through it all. He won’t let go, won’t let go, won’t let go, even as it feels like everything he is is burning away. Through blurred vision, he can see the candle-flames flicker wildly, as a circle draws itself in red lines beneath him, glowing bright, and then the candles blow themselves out. 

The slender hand in his is solid, and Sorey looks up to see the Firebird looking down at him through concerned blue-green eyes - no, he knows, without knowing how he knows, that her name, one of her many names, is Lailah. 

Slowly, very slowly, he gets up: it’s the most difficult thing he’s ever done, but he stumbles to his feet. 

“D...did it work?” he asks, and coughs, and even his lungs feel burned. Everything _hurts_ , but least he doesn’t feel like he’s walking through fire anymore. That’s an improvement, he guesses, maybe. 

“Yes,” Lailah says, and her soft voice is worried. 

“Oh, good.” Sorey says, and collapses.  
***  
When Sorey wakes up again, with the sound of wings in his head, he’s lying on Muse’s windowseat, without a single mark on his skin, but his throat is parched. The sun is near zenith: it’s midday, or very nearly, which means he’s only been out a few hours, he thinks. 

“Drink this,” Muse says, and presses a mug of water into his hands: she must have gone with the other women that morning to draw water from the river, since he’s the only man in the village who can go down to the river anymore. Sorey sips cautiously. “ _All_ of it.” she reminds him a moment later. 

“Right, right,” he says, and keeps drinking. Michael’s still not back, he realizes: the only people in the room with him are Muse and Lailah. “I guess that means now that I’ve made the pact, I should get ready to leave, huh?” 

Muse gives him a level look. “You need to rest first. And drink a lot more water.” 

“She’s right,” Lailah says. “Making the pact with me took a lot out of you. You should rest-” 

“I’ve rested enough, I think-” Sorey begins. 

“ _Tomorrow_.” both Muse and Lailah say at the same time - and as much as Sorey wants to leave that afternoon, he has to concede defeat when he tries to stand up and his legs won’t quite work properly. Tomorrow morning, then.  
***  
The next day, Sorey is up again at dawn. It doesn’t take long at all to get ready to leave: Sorey had already gotten most of what he’s bringing with him together, and he’s going to travel lightly, though he adds a second blank journal to the small pile that he’s shoving into a rucksack. The first blank journal was to continue his book of wishes, just in case he ran out of space: the second, though he doesn’t explain it out loud, is to write down everything he sees along the way for Mikleo. 

Muse presses more traveling food - mostly dried fruit and black bread baked into hard rounds - on him, and Sorey feels guilty, no matter how she insists that they’ll be fine for food. He almost wouldn’t have taken it, except Muse levels _such_ a look at him that he knows better - and suspects that even if he hadn’t taken it, the sheer force of her near-mother wishing would have ended up with it in his rucksack anyway. 

Grandfather gives him a horse, with the warning to take good care of her: Sorey isn’t entirely sure where he’d got her from, though he suspects it had been an offering left at the shrine by someone wealthy. The horse is a placid brown mare, even-tempered and steady-footed - which is fortunate, because he isn’t exactly a very good rider. (at least he can stay on). Lailah, for her part, flies invisibly (for now) above him. 

His mother, Muse, and Grandfather are the ones who see them off, as Michael is still very firmly nowhere in evidence: Sorey hugs his mother, and promises her all over again that he’ll come back safely. He isn’t sure just what Muse has told her - only that whatever it is, she’s taking it well, and he wishes her to be safe and well with all his heart. 

Sorey says his goodbyes, and looks back at the village as he begins to ride away, trying to commit it to memory: someday, he’ll come back here, but it’ll never be quite the same. And then he rides down and around a winding path, and his home is gone, lost in the mountain mist and fog. 

***  
“So,” Sorey says, awkwardly, several hours of riding later: he’s stopped with a map (such as it was), and trying not to wince. He’s never traveled this far from home before, and certainly has never ridden a horse for several hours at a stretch before: he’s seriously debating the merits of walking all the way at this point. “Where to first?” 

Lailah- once more in human form -smiles, and clasps her hands together. “If it’s all decided, I know where to go first,” she chirps, cheerfully. “I know an old friend who might be able to help us. But what do you think of mountains? Or maybe a forest on a mountain, it’s been a long while and I don’t know if the forest is still there. She doesn’t really like people much.” 

“I guess I like mountains,” Sorey says. “I’ve never really thought about it much.” 

“Wonderful! Let’s go pay her a visit.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Oh good, plot movement! Yay!  
> \- I still can't write Sorey to save my life. Hopefully someday I'll be able to.  
> \- it doesn't matter what universe, Michael has Problems.  
> \- The next couple of chapters are going to temporarily change focus elsewhere, to set up stuff that's happening at the same time. 
> 
>  
> 
> Glossary:  
>  _kvass_ : not a myth reference! It's actually a common Eastern European drink made from fermenting bread, usually rye or black bread. Despite being a fermented drink,it's considered non-alcoholic due to low alcohol content. Can be flavored with fruit or herbs, like mint, and is first mentioned in the _Primary Chronicle_.  
>  _The Firebird_ : there's a number of Russian and Slavic fairytales concerning the firebird, which in the source material is usually a magical, glowing bird with really wondrous feathers whose capture is usually the point of a Really Difficult Quest and brings both blessings and doom to whoever captures it. I've kind of went completely sideways with the concept for my own purposes.


	5. all that's dark and light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _(the world is cracked. the world is broken. the abyss is creeping in._
> 
>  
> 
> _whose wish broke the world?)_
> 
>  
> 
> The youngest daughter of the tsar comes to the village looking for the man who contracted the Firebird, and gets a very different answer.

On a late spring morning two moons after Sorey had left the village, Muse scrubs her floor until the rough-hewn wood shines. She doesn’t need to scrub her floor, but it’s something to keep herself busy and her hands occupied, instead of shaking her brother. Michael’s always been secretive, has been withdrawn for years, but ever since Sorey had made his ill-considered wish, he’s been even worse. He barely talks to her, these days, barely eats unless she makes him, spends a lot of his time shut in with his books - and even more worryingly, his book of wishes given that he hasn’t begun making wishes again. Michael’s been true to his word, thus far, about never making another wish, and all she knows is that he’s looking for something. But as to what he’s looking for? Muse has absolutely no idea, and her brother worries her.

_(a lot of things worry her, these days, waking from dreams of darkness and death, the abyss sings to her in her sleep and her throat closes against sobbing, wakes to grief all over again. she walks the borders of the village and sings her wishes twice as strong, twice as much, but fears it may not be enough._

_the world is cracked. the world is broken. the abyss is creeping in._

_whose wish broke the world?)_

A series of knocks on her door, rapid and light, catches her attention, and she sets aside her cloth and bucket, pulling open the door to find Selene standing there, looking frazzled and out of breath, as if she’d run straight to her door.

“Earth and Sky, what-” Muse begins to ask her best friend, but Selene cuts her off. 

“Muse, we need you at the village square,” she gasps, her gaze landing on the cloth curtain drawn against the corner where Michael is at his writing-desk, working on whatever he’s working on now. “There’s a noblewoman...she’s come all the way from the capital. And she’s looking for-” 

Muse sighs, heavily, as she gestures for Selene to follow her outside, shutting the door firmly behind her. “She’s looking for Michael, isn’t she?” she asks, once they’re safely outside where Michael can’t eavesdrop too easily and walking down the path. “I can’t imagine why-” except, of course, she’s lying, because she very well knows why - because he’s the last known contractor of the Firebird. Word would spread, of course, of Sorey’s contract, but until then, her brother’s still the last-known person to have quested with her. “And it won’t go well for her. Michael’s been in a mood for weeks.” 

“He’s always in a mood, isn’t he?” Selene points out, less than charitably, though Muse can’t blame her for that. “That’s why we need you-” 

“Earth and Sky, Selene, I’m a wizard, not a miracle-worker.” Muse sighs, again. “You didn’t tell her that _Sorey_ is the new contractor, did you?” 

Selene’s guilty look tells her everything that she needs to know, but she can’t blame her in the least. It’d been hard enough for Selene to accept that her only child had to leave the village in the first place - and he didn’t leave to seek his fortune, but to go on an impossible quest. Of course she’d want to protect him in the only way she could- trying to protect him from the schemes of some overambitious noblewoman. 

Muse can’t blame her in the least - she would have done the same in her shoes. 

“Who is this noblewoman, anyway?” Muse asks. “All you’ve told me is that she’s from the capital.” 

“She didn’t give her name,” Selene says, cautiously, and Muse is already afraid of the answer. “But from the retinue she has with her, and the arms on their shields, though she’s trying to hide them,...she’s probably the tsar’s youngest daughter.” 

“...because any of the other princesses would have given their names and demanded hospitality?” Muse supposes this isn’t as much of a disaster as it could have been. Supposes. But the line is rather thin, after all, and perhaps for the first time, truly appreciates Michael’s decision to move out into the middle of nowhere. 

After all, it had taken eighteen years for anyone to find him. 

***  
The noblewoman - the princess - is easy to spot, being the young blond woman with a white and pink surcoat over her armor talking to Zenrus, who looks less than amused: Selene, for her part, had squeezed her hand and fled for safer ground, not wanting to deal with her father when he’s in a temper. While Muse had expected the princess’s bodyguards to be hanging around uselessly, they aren’t: instead, they’ve been set to work repairing various buildings around the square, buildings that have gone unmaintained due a lack of spare labor to maintain them. 

Muse has a healthy distrust of aristocrats - distrust, because she’s beautiful, poor, and a wizard, none of which are a good combination with nobility around, and healthy, because she’s not anywhere near as overly paranoid as Michael is - but even she has to admit that this speaks well of the girl. 

“Young lady,” Zenrus says, because as elder, priest of Perun and avatar,he can get away with such things as ‘less social niceties to princesses extremely far down the line of succession’, because even the most stuck-up noble wouldn’t dare argue with a man who is the mortal incarnation of a god. “This is Muse, our village wizard. She is the one that you’re looking to speak to.” 

The girl turns to her, with such guileless hope in her blue eyes, that Muse almost doesn’t want to tell her no. “Lady Muse-” 

Muse shakes her head. “I am a wizard, but I am no noblewoman.” she says, quietly. “Come, walk with me.” 

“Of course,” the princess says, just as Muse pauses, as something occurs to her. “How should I address you, then?” 

“Muse - just Muse. My brother is Michael.”

Sometimes, in the very early mornings or late at night when she can’t sleep, Muse goes down to the river, hoping for a glimpse of her son even though a _rusalka_ will never bother or harm a woman. Even before Mikleo had become a _rusalka_ , she had walked the path by the river and sung, hoping against hope that wherever he was, her songs would reach him. 

_(she had considered, sometimes, in the time since Mikleo had died, before Sorey had made his wish, to have made her own. Life for life. But there is too much depending on her for her to make that choice, as much as she wants her son to live again, and she knows he wouldn’t have wanted that, wouldn't have wanted anyone to die for him. ._

_and she remembers Michael, shattered and sharp, who cannot forgive himself for something he never speaks of, the ghosts that haunt him still. for all that she wants Mikleo to live, she doesn’t want him to live and never forgive himself.)_

“Has anyone warned your men not to go down to the river? There’s a _rusalka_ haunting the river, and he’s drowned strangers that get too close.” Muse asks: she’s taken to warning strangers away from the river, to protect them as well as the _rusalka_ that had been her son. A _rusalka_ cannot help its nature, but she will do what she can to keep everyone safe. 

The girl nods. “Lord Zenrus warned us,” she says. “When we first came to the village, even before he asked why we were there.” 

Muse exhales, releasing the breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Good,” she says, and begins to lead the princess up the path away from the village square, back towards her house. “You’ve come a long way from home, and you truly must be desperate, given that you’re looking for my brother.” 

The princess briefly looks startled, before her face smooths back over. “Yes,” she says, quietly. “I know that I’m not exactly welcome, here, but I had to try. There’s too much going wrong, and there’s no one who can help.” 

“Aren’t there wizards in the capital?” Muse asks, cautiously, already not liking the sound of this: while she didn’t expect there to be many wizards in the capital, there still should be some, wishing their blessings over the capital and its people. 

“There aren’t many,” she says, which Muse expected: there aren’t that many wizards, at least not many that have significant talent and the training to go with it, much less many of those who care to live in a city. It was unusual enough that there had been four of them in this village, even. “A lot of the older ones...they’re too entangled in politics, with my father’s chancellor, and have forgotten how to help. And the younger ones...they’ve been dying mysteriously, or fleeing..” 

“...dying?” Muse asks, much more calmly than she feels, because that familiar shadow is falling over her heart again. Wizards usually didn’t mysteriously die, assuming they didn’t wish themselves into a fatal tangle of fates or wish something that was too strong for them: they tended to live far, far longer than ordinary people, time not touching them the same way. “Do you have any idea how they died?” 

The princess shakes her head. “Not for most of them. But Lord Uno...he was one of the best swimmers in the capital, and he was found in the lake a moon and a half ago.” 

The similarity to Mikleo’s death hits her then, hard: a talented wizard who was also a strong swimmer, drowns. It wasn’t unheard of, she’d known a girl growing up who loved to swim and despite all her wishes, had drowned in a sudden storm, but the coincidence seems a little much, especially with the state of things as the princess had been describing them. It’s likely that Uno, like Mikleo, had been murdered, and she suspects what had been involved in his murder, like that of her son’s - 

_(After Mikleo had died, Muse hadn’t been able to bring herself to give away his clothing, his books: instead, she put all his things away into a wooden chest that had been a wedding gift, long ago. At the very bottom of the chest, concealed by a false bottom, she’d put the shattered remains of his circlet and locked the chest, with the complicated puzzle-lock her husband had spent hours carving. It wasn’t like she would need the circlet itself anymore to track his killer, now that she had the scent of his magic, but she couldn’t bear to throw it away, either.)_

“There’s something very wrong stirring,” the princess says, gravely. “I’m trying to do what I can to help, but I’m not a wizard.” 

“And so you came looking for my brother.” Muse sighs. “You may be disappointed in that regard. Michael is brilliant, but he’s a difficult man, and he hasn’t cast a single spell in over eighteen years.” 

“I can’t simply give up,” the girl says, stubbornly, and in the tilt of her chin, in her bright eyes, Muse is reminded of Sorey. Of that same optimism, that genuine desire to do good, all laid bare: this girl had ridden all the way from the capital in search of a man whose deeds from stories had told her that he might be able to help the people she had a duty to. “If there’s even a slightest chance he can help somehow-” 

“I’m not telling you to give up.” Muse says, gently, as she stops on the steps of her house. “Michael might not have the power anymore to help you, if he even would use it. And he doesn’t have the sword anymore - he gave it to my apprentice two moons ago.” 

“Your apprentice?” the princess asks, curiously. 

“A name for a name.” Muse folds her arms over her chest. “I’ll tell you his name, if you tell me who you are.” 

“...I’m Alisha. Alisha Diphda.” she introduces herself politely, though with the hesitation on her house name. Just as Selene had thought: the tsar’s traveling youngest daughter, least-beloved of the nobles but most beloved of the people, or so the rumors that had filtered back to them had said. Muse doesn’t trust her entirely, but between her and Michael, she’s always been better at reading people and their intentions: she at least trusts that Alisha will attempt to do her duty by her people, act in their interests. And that is at least enough trust for this - that whatever she does is not out of ambition, but for her people. 

“My apprentice is Sorey.” Muse says, and pushes open the door, just as the sound of a book hitting the wall echoes through the room. She sighs, heavily. “Michael, we have a guest. I’m not asking you to be friendly, but you’ll at least stay and listen.” 

Alisha, to her credit, looks only a little startled, just as Michael draws back the curtain separating his alcove from the rest of the main room and steps out. He looks exhausted, like he hasn’t slept - which he hasn’t, even with Muse taking over cooking just so she could slip soporific herbs in his food-, dark circles beneath his eyes standing out even more, and at his feet, she could see his long-disused book of wishes. 

“Princess,” he says, folding his arms over his chest: he doesn’t sound happy, but he’s not openly hostile, which is at least better than Muse expected. “I heard your conversation outside the door. You’ve come a long way for nothing.” 

Muse narrows her eyes at him, grabs his collar, and hauls him across the room, shoving him into her windowseat, because she’s giving him no choice in the matter. “Brother.” she says, sweetly but warningly. “ _Sit down.”_

Michael holds up his hands, as if he’s trying to placate her. “I never said I wasn’t going to stay.” he grumbles at her, and as annoyed as she is at him, Muse is at least glad to see something like a moment of what passes for normal for him. It won’t last long, she’s already certain. 

“You could at least pretend to be helpful.” Muse leans over and hisses in his ear. “You used to do that quite well not so long ago.” 

Alisha clears her throat, interrupting them. “Excuse me,” she says, politely - with far more dignity at her age then either of them have at theirs, Muse observes ruefully, nevermind that both she and Michael look less than half a decade older than the princess at most-. “But I did come a long way, and the sooner I tell you about what’s happening, the sooner I can be on my way.” _And out of your hair_ , is the polite implication. 

“Go on, please.” Muse says, and Alisha begins to tell her tale.  
***  
The troubles in the capital - and the surrounding areas - had begun when hedge-magic had begun to fade. The little charms most families had, made by a knowledgeable old grandmother or neighbor, to bring luck or dispel the evil eye were losing their power, especially the ones crafted to invoke the blessings of Svetovid. Curses were still just as potent, but the minor blessings were beginning to fail: those crafted to invoke the protection of other gods were still working, but against the heavy weight of the misfortune and darkness slowly creeping over the land, they were not enough. 

The fate-weaving magic of wizards was still unaffected, but of the few in the capital, most wouldn’t help, too tangled in politics. There were a few, who tried, until the deaths began, and it wasn’t just the young wizards dying, the only ones who were trying to help, but normal people, too. Murders. She’d seen several of the scenes herself, when the bodies were found: they’d died horrifically, with something almost ritualistic about their deaths. The last had been partially eaten. 

Uno, poor, loyal Uno, had stayed until the end, even after his surviving companions had fled, even after Sindra had broken down and begged him to come with her, that there was nothing he could do if he was dead, but he’d stayed anyway, had stayed and wished all the spells he could, wished against the inevitable, and then he’d drowned in the lake. Drowned, when he’d been the best swimmer in the capital.

The head priest - and avatar - of Svetovid had fled his shrine in the south amidst rumors that he had lost his powers, leaving the priestess to take up his mantle in his stead, and it had rained without ceasing in that city since that day, the crops of the villagers drowning in their fields. There was enough grain stored away to prevent famine in the region, at least for now, but what of next year, if the rain didn’t stop and another year went by without a harvest? Plague in another city that hadn’t yet begun to spread, but it was only a matter of time. 

Before he’d died, Uno had told her of lingering darkness. Of disruption. The abyss creeping in. It sings, he’d said, in my dreams, purity of purpose and it crawls and crawls and crawls. The world is broken. The world is breaking. And then he’d died, and except for her teacher, Alisha was alone. No one would listen to her. No one would help her. 

The only hope she had was to chase down a man from the stories, who had contracted the Firebird, whose quests were always impossible.. What was one more impossible thing, when the land itself was unraveling?

***  
“...there’s a dark sorcerer in the capital.” Muse buries her face in her hands for a moment and almost wants to weep. How can there be so many? Or, worse still, it was the same sorcerer who had killed her son - how powerful can he be now, after so many deaths? After so many murders, so many sacrifices. 

And things were worse than she could possibly have dreamed. In this village, they were isolated from news, except for the rumors the rare visitors and Rose bring with them: thanks to her wishes and Zenrus’s power, they were protected from much of what was happening elsewhere. But- 

_(no wonder her wishes hadn’t been enough. no matter how much she sings-)_

As Alisha finishes speaking, Michael’s shoulders slump. “I can’t help you, anymore.” he mutters, and turns away, his shoulders shaking. He isn’t crying, because whatever broke him had taken away his tears, but Muse wraps her arms around him. “I never could.” 

“Princess,” Muse says, her brother trembling in her arms like he wants to cry but can’t, like he wants to scream but can’t, either, “Leave us.” 

Alisha looks hesitant, and Muse knows that look: the girl wants to help, wants to try to help desperately, but she can’t. “But-” 

“Go,” she says, softer this time. “Ride fast, ride far: you can still catch up to Sorey if you hurry. He’s two moons ahead of you, but he’s not a skilled rider.” 

The girl’s chin comes up firmly, and Muse has to approve of her resolve. “Where could I find him?” she asks, calmly, as if Muse hadn’t just told her that she’d have to chase after a young wizard on an impossible quest while being two moons and more behind him. But she doesn’t have any more answers for Alisha: there’s any number of places Sorey could have gone first, and she opens her mouth to sing her question to earth and sky. Assuming they would even tell her. 

“The sacred mountains to the north,” Michael interjects unexpectedly, his voice sounding hoarse. He still isn’t looking at either of them, but he’s talking and actually offering some kind of insight, which is more than Muse’s expected from him in this mood. “That’s where she would have sent him.” 

“...the sibling witches,” Muse realizes, turning back to Alisha. “He’s gone to seek counsel with them. And you’ll have to go alone - you can’t bring your retinue with you.” 

“I understand,” Alisha says, gravely, and bows to both of them. “Thank you. And goodbye.” 

“Travel safely,” Muse calls after her as she leaves, sings a wish bright and clear and sends it spinning into the daylight, before she turns her attention back to her brother. “I wasn’t expecting you to help her.” 

“I have no love for her father or his general.” Michael says, glancing up at her, his eyes hollow and bruised-dark, dark hair tangled. “But what she came for...I stopped being a wizard for a reason, sister.” 

It’s the one secret he’s never entrusted to her: it’s the one secret he’s never given her, that’s hung between them for years, since he’d come home broken. Why he’d stopped wishing, why he’d even tried to empty himself out and desire nothing, why he’d refused to teach her and Mikleo until her son was dead and she’d threatened to leave him alone with his ghosts, and she’s still trying to forgive him for it when she’s forgiven him everything else. 

“Michael,” Muse’s hands tighten on her book of wishes, as Michael tears himself free of her arms, stands up, and paces back and forth, restless and haunted. It’s the one secret he’s never given her, in all these years, and perhaps she should have suspected, but- “What have you done?” 

They should have had this talk years ago: they should have had this talk years ago, when he’d first come home, when he’d cast away his wishes. Could she have helped him, then, before it was too late? But it’s years and years too late, and they’ve been facing the consequences since Mikleo died, since before Mikleo died, but only now, only now, is the real nature of them becoming clear.

“The balance between the gods, between Svetovid and Czernobog, is broken, sister.” Michael says, and doesn’t look at her, as her eyes settle on his book of wishes on the floor by his writing-desk, where he'd thrown it at the wall. And finally, finally, she understands why he can’t forgive himself.“And it was my fault.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I don't like this chapter much, so I'm sorry in advance. I can't write Alisha to save my life.  
> \- obviously I had to make up Selene's personality from whole cloth since there's not that much on her in canon.  
> \- Will there ever be a universe where everything isn't All Michael's Fault?  
> \- Two more interlude-ish chapters: next chapter should be from Dezel's POV. Can I actually write Dezel? we'll find out soon.  
> \- Sorry, Uno. :(
> 
> Glossary:  
>  _Chernobog_ : Had a lot of spellings to his name, which means "black god". Supposedly a dark, evil god but as the only sources on him are Christian ones, Who Actually Knows at this point whether that was the case or even if he was actually important. The _Chronica Slavorum_ , written by a Saxon Christian priest, mentions him as a bringer of all bad things/ill fortune/curses and having a counterpart that brings good fortune/everything good. For a while, a lot of people thought that his counterpart was Belobog, the White God, but Belobog was never actually mentioned in any of the historical sources. So ??????.  
>  _Svetovid_ : a four-faced Slavic god of war, fertility, abundance, sometimes also known as the Dawning God, also sometimes identified with Perun. Some theories have him be the opposing number to Chernobog, which I'm taking and running with.


	6. the lies you tell yourself;

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"A kresnik is bound to their home, boy, guess you haven't found your home yet."_
> 
> An assassin who keeps the balance and a vampire hunter are two unlikely traveling companions.

Rose is forever on the move: she never sits still, and can never stay in a town for more than a week at a time, almost a storm in the shape of a girl. Another man might have had a hard time keeping up with her, but Dezel has been a wanderer for over half his life, everything blurring together until he almost doesn’t remember the place that he came from originally. 

_(a kresnik is bound to their village, boy, to their home, he vaguely remembers his mentor saying years ago. born to protect against evil and all that. guess we’re different, eh, bound to follow the wind. a casual arm draped over his shoulder: he’s still short, in this memory, years from growth.. or guess you haven’t found your home yet._

_he doesn’t remember his mentor’s face or his name, only a deep voice and those words.)_

The wind whispers of darkness and death: he is no wizard, whose wishes tangle fates with their making, but he knows ill omens when he hears them, when he smells them, when he reads the wind. The night has always been full of spirits, both benevolent and not, but this isn’t the same: Everything is changing, and he prowls in soul-shape even more cautiously: he’s never stopped hunting his quarry, for his revenge, but he is a kresnik. Just as much as his nature is to hunt vampires, he is just as much a hunter of supernatural evil no matter what face it wears. But there’s another change in the air, in the wind, that has nothing to do with the abyss, has nothing to do with lingering, creeping doom: Purity and flame, light borne on golden wings, but Dezel’s certain that no one was stupid and idealistic enough to contract the Firebird in this day and age. 

Rose hums to herself, from where she’s sitting nearby, and he can hear the rustle of the birch-bark parchment in her hands: a single sheet, not the rapidly-flipping pages of Rose’s meticulously kept ledger, which she almost doesn’t need with how she keeps track of the flow of money down to the smallest copper coin. It’s not a talent he’s ever had: instead, he knows every spirit, good or evil, that haunts the night, everything he might someday have to hunt. 

“Hmph.. Another contract, then?” he asks, despite himself. It’s not as though he’s a member of Rose’s group, either way, neither Sparrowfeather or Scattered Bone: Dezel travels with them, because it had been convenient, _(for longer than it’s been convenient)_ , but it’s not like he helps that much with whatever she and her group are doing. Reads the wind just to make sure Rose isn’t in trouble, to help keep her safe, follows at a distance just in case his quarry crosses her path - but she can handle herself against most things. 

_(his soul is still bruised, he’s fairly certain, from when he’d astrally projected and followed her as a dog, but made the mistake of letting her see him. she’d screamed so loudly about ghost dogs that she’d woken up everyone else and punched him back into his body so hard that he couldn’t astrally project for a week. he’d never made that mistake again.)_

“Mmhm.” Rose replies, and whistles, slowly. “Ambitious~It’s for the tsar’s youngest daughter. Not sure what she’s done to deserve it besides be a pain in someone’s ass.” 

“Does that mean you won’t take it?” he asks, despite himself. As far as he’s seen since he’s traveled with them, Rose won’t take all the assassination contracts she’s offered, because “they haven’t done anything besides be a pain in someone’s ass”, and this one doesn’t seem to be any different. 

“Dunno. I need more information first.” Rose says, and he can hear her move as she stretches. “And I’m going to ask for everyone’s input - which includes yours.” 

“Why are you asking me? It’s your decision.” Dezel stands up: he’s been trying hard to not get too involved, too-wound up in their lives, and not entirely succeeding, even if he only admits it to himself when he’s alone, prowling beneath the darkened moon. “It doesn’t concern me.” 

As fast as he stands up, Rose is still faster, her arms around his neck as she grabs him in a hold, clinging like a limpet to its rock, and he can’t manage to shake her off no matter how hard he tries. “As long as you’re here with us, it concerns you!” 

“Get off!” he swears at her, tries to shove her off, and Rose laughs at him, clear and bright, and continues to hang on, even as he tries to shake her off. . 

_(He’ll never say the words out loud, but he’ll miss this when it’s done. He’ll miss this when everything is over.)_

“Anyway,” she says, when she’s finally had her fill of shaking him and lets him go, “There’s something more important to investigate, anyway. Apparently the Firebird’s been contracted again or something, by another wizard.” Rose shudders at the mention of wizards: she’s scared of ghosts, which is amusing except when she’d punched him, and intensely creeped out by wizards, which was ironic given that she has the wishing talent. Perhaps even doubly ironic given that the soft-spoken, motherly young woman from the village Rose keeps visiting, three times a year, who trades sewing for supplies is a wizard, who lays wishes in every stitch. 

“...so someone was stupid enough to do it.” Dezel says. 

“Uh-huh.” Rose says. “I haven’t been able to find out more than that, since I guess they haven’t done too much yet. But you know, wizards.” he can hear her sleeves rustle as she gestures, waving her hands excitedly, though he’s never seen her do it unless he’s astrally projecting. “If they do something too stupid and break the balance too far, though I guess there’s not much of a balance left at this point, I’ll have to do something about it. But it’s too early to know.” 

Merchant, assassin, unknowing wizard, keeper of the balance: she holds all those things inside herself, but her ignorance might someday get her killed. Dezel can’t teach her how to be a wizard, and it’s not his place, anyway, even if he knew how to explain in any kind of way that she’ll listen to. All he can do, and does, is watch over her. 

_(Rose never knows how close to death she came two years ago. she’s fast with daggers and wishes unknowingly, strong and pure, very capable of taking care of herself, but she traveled with a dark sorcerer without knowing it. he hid well, but not quite well enough._

_Dezel stood guard that night, just out of her sight, growled and bared his teeth. He cannot save everyone, has only ever been the hunter who comes after, and chooses to protect what is most important to him._

_The wizard-boy from that village died instead.)_

“I’m going to go to bed.” Rose yawns: the two of them are the last ones awake, as the rest of Rose’s little group have gone to bed. They’re camped on the edge of yet another sleepy village in the middle of nowhere, with nothing no one is interested in, no wizards, and not even any unruly spirits to mar the night’s peace. “You’d better get some sleep, since we’re leaving in the morning.” 

Dezel makes a noise that Rose likely chooses to take as agreement as she walks away: instead, he settles back on the ground, the weight of the whip at his side comforting and familiar, though the silence is empty and unfamiliar with nothing to fill it, and closes his eyes. Once, he’d been accustomed to silence for days on end, with only his own voice in his head to break it, but even as much as he tells himself that he prefers the silence, it’s become entirely unfamiliar. 

_(his body sleeps, but he pads through the night on four great white paws, sniffs the air and listens and prowls, on guard. it’s only now he can see, and it’s only through these eyes that he’s ever seen Rose’s smile.)_

It’s not as though he’s made his intentions a secret: he’s been clear about the fact that he’s hunting for his revenge, that he’s only traveling with them long enough to find it, and once he finds it, once he kills her, he’s gone. He hasn’t thought about what came next, hasn’t ever thought about what he’d do past his revenge: she’d shattered his life, and all he’d cared about was hunting her down. _(when you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves)._ And it’s not like he’s come any closer to finding her in all this time, even while an assassin-girl who is a wizard afraid of ghosts and wizards smiles a smile he can’t see at him and tries to offer him a life outside the narrow confines he’s set for himself. 

_(he’ll miss this when it’s over, he very carefully doesn’t tell himself. he doesn't tell himself that he’ll miss her when their paths part and he isn’t traveling by her side anymore. he’ll miss her when she’s gone: the sound of her laughter, the warmth of her voice, even her arm around his neck. he’ll miss this. he’ll miss her. he’s never had to choose between Rose or his revenge, and even though he tells himself he’ll choose revenge, every time, he doesn’t listen to his own voice telling him he doesn’t know=_

_a kresnik is bound to their home, boy. guess you haven’t found your home yet- )_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Short chapter: this is mainly meant to be more an establishing chapter about "so what are Dezel and Rose up to" and setting up for when they eventually cross paths with Sorey.   
> \- ...no matter what universe, Rose will always punch someone over the supernatural. Sorry Dezel, sucks to be you.   
> \- ...I'm not sure that I can write Dezel properly, sigh. On the upside, at least I can make really bad Castlevania jokes about Dezel being a vampire hunter who wields a whip. and Zaveid.
> 
> Glossary:  
>  _kresnik_ : a _kresnik_ is a shaman/vampire hunter who hunts _kudlaks_ , which are vampires. Among their powers is the ability to astrally project their soul in the form of a white animal to fight a _kudlak_ , who astrally projects as a black animal. There's something special about them being born with a caul but I can't remember what it is and I misplaced my book in the overstuffed disaster of my bookcases. 
> 
> There is also a deity by the name of Kresnik, who is a sun god described as having "golden hair and golden hands", who can also take the form of a horse.


	7. interlude: and it's peaceful in the deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> once there was a boy who drowned. 
> 
> and you are dead and you are water.

once upon a time, there was a boy. beautiful and sharp-tongued and much-beloved, and that was you, wasn’t it, mikleo? wasn’t that your name, when you were a living boy who lived and loved and wished. you lived and you died as mortals do, and maybe that was where everything went wrong.

you died tired and angry. you died not wanting to die. you died with your beloved’s name on your lips and in your heart and with water in your eyes. you died not wanting to leave him. you died angry. you died and your wishes tangled: you died and drowned and the river took you, and the darkness at the bottom of the river claimed you.

_(are you being punished for your uncle’s mistakes?)_

it wasn’t that you woke up again, because this isn’t you and you didn’t wake up. you are water and darkness and tangled wishes that drag men to the bottom of the river and wears your own lovely face in a mockery of everything you ever were while you were alive. 

this isn’t what you would have chosen, if you could have chosen for yourself, mikleo-that-was, but you are a _rusalka_. a _rusalka_ cannot choose. all the choices were made for you before you fell into the river’s cold embrace, and your only sin was being young and not wanting to die. your wishes tangled, fate tangled, and here you are-and-are-not. somewhere, somewhere, you are screaming, maybe, or would be if you still had a voice, still had words, still had a heart. but you are dead and you are water. 

maybe your beloved can save you: maybe he can’t. what would you wish for, if you could? would you wish to be saved? would you wish to rest? would you wish for something else entirely? but you cannot wish. you cannot want. you cannot dream, caught in the water’s embrace. you are dead and you are water. 

once upon a time, there was a boy, who drowned. you were that boy once: maybe you can be that boy again. but it won’t be your choice, will it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- And this is the last "elsewhere" interlude...I can't even call this a chapter because it's so short.. Next chapter will return to Sorey.


	8. the witch on the mountain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The youngest of the witches living on the tallest of the sacred mountains hates humans - and the only thing she hates more than humans are wizards. 
> 
> And now there's another wizard-boy on her mountain, with his own impossible wish. She doesn't expect that boy to be any different: she doesn't expect that boy to change her mind.

A thousand years, a thousand stories, a thousand faces in the terrified whispers, in the distorted stories of the short-lived, short-memoried humans who live below, but the youngest of the witches who lives on the tallest of the sacred mountains has only ever worn one. Once, they knew her and her brother for what they were - gods, if minor, the last among the gods who came before - and sent prayers and offerings spinning upward, even as they begged for their intercession, but time went on and they forgot. Diminished her and her brother down in their minds from gods to witches, as if the petty curses of human witches had any comparison at all to what they could do, as if by naming them, they could be limited. Hah. The mortals had diminished them down so their minds could handle them on their level instead of accepting them as they were - and still asked so much, both petty and not, with so little given in return. If one more village girl came seeking fire because, oh no, her stepmother had asked it of her before turning her out of the house, Edna would have some choice words for her. 

_(a long time ago, when the world was new, she held a dying butterfly in her hands and wept. all things die, sister. all things die, and we’ll come back again next spring. her brother’s warm arms and his promise. and-)_

Stone listens, stone waits, stone endures, but the humans asked too much and gave too little in return. Edna hates humans, and the only thing she hates worse than ordinary humans are wizards. A wizard broke the balance and finished what humans had already set in motion, and there’s nothing left in her brother’s eyes that knows her. She hates wizards and the moment that boy had set foot on her mountain with Lailah, thirty-one years and a blink of an eye ago, the stone had whispered of the doom he’d bring. Edna hadn’t let him take a single step further, never let him climb the sacred mountain to seek her advice, and yet he’d broken everything anyway. Trust a wizard to find a way somehow, and maybe if she’d known exactly what he’d finish, then she would just have buried him under a pile of rocks rather than just driven him away. 

_(Eizen had been changing for years, losing his shape. her hands soft on his snout as he exhales an apology, his words are scales rattling across stone. where had the legends of dragons in the mountains begun, except with them? but where once the change forward and back and in between had been like breathing, there came a day when Eizen could no longer shed his reptilian skin and she could no longer put hers on._

_but he’d still known her. he’d still known her. he’d known her until he hadn’t anymore. she’d reached out for him and he’d tried to take her hand off, as if she was just a tasty mortal morsel and not the little sister who had been with him since almost the beginning, the little sister who had cried on his shoulder, who he’d teased, who he carried in his arms and helped to come into her power._

_it’s only been the blink of an eye, those few years when Eizen’s been beyond her, gone somewhere she can’t follow,but those few years were too many. too many when the balance is broken and for all her power there’s nothing she can do. the rocks crack beneath her feet as she stomps, and what good is it being a goddess, if she can’t even find a way to save her own brother?)_

And now there’s another wizard-boy with Lailah trying to ascend the mountain, and the stones are silent. Hah, of course they would be: it’s not as though they tell her much of what she needs to know when she needs to know. The last boy wizard had grown up and shattered what was left of the balance: what would this one do? What impossible wish would this one try to bring to her door? It’s not like wizards know anything but trouble: they don’t understand the kind of havoc their fate-manipulations cause, and it’s always other people that end up picking up the pieces. If he breaks anything else, she finally decides, she’ll break him. 

Assuming - and it is a very generous assumption on her part - that he even manages to get to her hut. Edna knows her mountain like she knows her heart, and she’s never made it easy for mortals to find her: she doesn’t need the stones to tell her that the wizard’s lost and going the wrong way. And as easy as it would have been to let her brother eat him, she doesn’t want Eizen to have any more blood that he doesn’t choose to shed on his hands. He’d always been too fond of mortals for his own good: he’d been the one who had helped them more, all along. 

Instead, she picks up her parasol to shade herself from the sun, because witch or not, she’s still a lady, and sets off, sinking into the stone to travel swiftly. It doesn’t take her long to rise up from the ground, right behind the boy wizard and Lailah. There’s someone else that doesn’t belong somewhere else on the mountain, that annoying _kresnik_ and avatar who’d called himself her brother’s friend, but she’ll deal with him later.  
“You’re going the wrong way.” she says, utterly deadpan, as she snaps her parasol closed, and then Lailah wraps her in a warm, enthusiastic hug. Some things never changed, really, have been the same since the beginning: Lailah is still bright and bubbly, even after centuries of disappointment and centuries of sealing herself in a sword. 

“It’s been such a long time, Edna!” the Firebird babbles excitedly, as Edna tries to extricate herself from the embrace. “I’m glad that you’re still here. It’s been so long that I thought you might have left.” 

The idea of her leaving the mountain is laughable: she’s never liked the company of mortals, and now there were entirely too many for her tastes. Where could she even have gone? The furthest she’s gone is to the next mountain over, centuries back, when she and Eizen were fighting and she was really tired of his company, but she’d come back eventually. And it’s even more laughable: she can’t leave her brother. Not now. Eizen had always been the traveling witch, or so the legends had eventually painted him, always come back with some stupid trinket that she’d secretly liked and more stories about how the world below was changing, until everything changed and he couldn’t travel anymore. 

“You haven’t changed.” Edna remarks, finally managing to free herself and getting a good look at Lailah’s new contractor. He doesn’t look like much, messy brown hair and wide green eyes: probably naive as anything, she’s seen enough would-be heroes with impossible wishes to know that much. “No wonder no one but wizards take you seriously.” 

“Speaking of wizards,” Lailah says, after a moment. “I wish I could have seen you again under better circumstances, but-” 

Edna snorts. “I’ve dealt with enough of yours to know what you’re here for.” her gaze falls on the boy. “Another stupid boy who thinks he can be a hero. I’m not helping you clean up the mess this time.” 

The wizard shakes his head. “I won’t cause a mess. I don’t want to hurt anyone with my quest.” he says, firmly: even worse, a wizard who thinks he won’t hurt anyone. It’d almost be adorable in some other world. 

“So that’s why you’re here?” Edna says, her voice utterly dry. She’s seen so many wizards with that same attitude, or who at least pay lip-service to it, and she’s tired of .“You haven’t asked nearly nicely enough for me to consider it - not you, Lailah. You, wizard. If you really want me to consider helping you, then you need to ask with the proper respect.” 

“Please,” the boy says, after a moment, sounding almost desperate, like he’s throwing aside his pride, and drops to his knees, looking up at her. What could be so important to him? It’s not like she’s ever met a wizard that willing to bow to her, not for a long, long time, and even ordinary mortals preferred to fear her rather than truly respect her. “I need your help.” 

“Get up,” she says, and catches his and Lailah’s hands as he gets on his feet. “We’re not talking here.” 

Instead, she drags them both through the earth - and the wizard yelps in sudden surprise - and back to her hut. It’s simple - it’s always been simple, a little wooden hut that stands on a single chicken leg, bigger on the inside than on the outside. 

“Oh, wow,” the wizard says, when he sees her house. “So all the old stories were right.” he pauses, as if considering. “Does it hop when you want to move somewhere else?” 

_(Eizen had laughed so hard when he’d first seen it. “Does it hop, Edna?” he’d laughed until she’d poked him in the ribs with her parasol, and then he’d rolled around on her floor in pain instead.)_

“I don’t answer stupid questions,” she says, rolling her eyes, as she pushes open the door. “And that was beyond stupid.” 

Her little normin servants hurry out of her way as she leads Lailah and the wizard to the kitchen, not taking them anywhere near her inner sanctums. She’s not nearly done testing him: she’s always run mortals seeking her favor through a gauntlet and this boy won’t be an exception. 

The boy’s green eyes are wide, trying to take everything in, and Edna pushes down the memory of Eizen’s enthusiasm for new things. There’s a journal under his arm: if he’s stupid enough to make a wish in her house, then he’s stupid enough to get what’s coming to him if he does. 

“What do you want me to do?” the wizard asks. 

Edna sets down the large pan filled with three kinds of black seeds, all practically identical and mixed with dirt, in front of the boy. “If you really want to ask my advice, then sort these all out.” she says, with her hands on her hips. “And don’t take too long, either, or else you’ll get nothing.” 

The wizard’s green eyes are fixed on hers. Stubborn mortal. He won’t actually do it, she’s sure. It’s not an easy task - it’s actually practically impossible. But she’s tired of mortals begging for the easy way out of whatever their problems are, and maybe someday someone will actually be worthy of her help. 

“And don’t ask the Firebird for her help, either. That’s cheating, and I don’t like cheaters.” she says, just to make it more difficult as she saunters towards the door. The wizard is kneeling in front of the pan, trying to take it all in. Maybe he’ll give up in despair. Boring, but typical, and she stops in the doorway long enough to jab him in the ribs with her parasol, hearing him yelp. “Get on with it. It’s not as though you have eternity.” 

“I’ll have it done by the time you come back,” the boy says, wincing, as he reaches into the pan with his bare hand and draws out a handful of seeds. 

“I doubt it,” Edna says, utterly deadpan. He’s really going to try? “But I guess you can try to fail.” 

She shuts the hut’s door behind her as she goes: Lailah follows her outside, watching her with calm, quiet eyes, and Edna almost can’t stand it. How does she have so much faith in a mortal? It’s not like she talks about it, any of it, but it’s not like rumors don’t get around. Disappointment and failure, and her last wizard’s wish had broken the world. And yet. 

“You have too much faith in him,” Edna says, and doesn’t let Lailah respond: instead, she sinks through the earth and is away, rising back up out of the ground to see the setting sun. After a moment, Edna walks to sit on the rock overlooking where her brother dwells now, outside his lair. The stones beneath her fingers speak of change, speak of an undoing, speak of the doom that has been coming for years, and Edna can’t bring herself to care. Her world ended when she looked into her brother’s eyes and he no longer knew her: now it’s just mortals catching up with the fate they wrought. 

_(and she doesn’t expect that boy to be any different. she doesn’t expect that boy to change her mind.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- why do I think I can write anyone?! well, here's Edna. Or my attempt at Edna, anyway.  
> \- Eizen situation: still Fucked.  
> \- let's see how I manage to parallel more Zestiria stuff in this. As a note on that: dragons in this world are not _quite_ guaranteed to be as much of a disaster as they are in Zestiria proper. There's a few different kinds of dragons in Slavic mythology, ranging from "evil" to "not entirely benevolent and not completely evil but Respected As Hell due to wisdom and knowledge in magic" depending on the kind + where the legend originated from. That being said...Michael Broke Some Shit. 
> 
> Glossary:  
>  _Baba Yaga_ : extremely ambiguous, mysterious figure from Slavic mythology, who was originally a minor goddess and later was known as a witch. She lived on a hut on chicken legs or a single chicken leg in the woods, and heroes generally sought her out. Was alternately villainous and antagonistic, hindering those who sought her help, and a benefactor, depending on the story in question. Some versions have her as one of a trio of witches all named Baba Yaga . 
> 
> The story Edna references about the girl with the stepmother sending her to get fire was the story of _Vasilisa the Beautiful_ , which I took and ran with when I adapted Baba Yaga for Edna (and Eizen). 
> 
> There are no stories about Baba Yaga turning into a dragon ever but ran sideways, own purpose, etc::


	9. the exile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A trial, a _kresnik_ , and a dragon. 
> 
> _“So you’re looking for a way to bring him back to life, aren’t you, that isn’t your wizard’s magic?”_  
>  _“Yeah, that’s right. Please. Can you help me?”_  
>  _“That kind of magic comes from the realms of the gods.”_

Sorey sneezes, yet again, and his eyes are watering. There’s got to be dust mixed in with the dirt and seeds: he’s never had that reaction to _seeds_ before, not when he’s spent spring and summer helping to sow and weed and grow the crops back home. He pauses just long enough to scrub his eyes with the back of his hand, careful to not get dust in his eyes, and gets back to work. He doesn’t have much time to finish this, he doesn’t know when the witch is coming back, and he’s only barely managed to get even a little way into this task. He can’t afford to fail. He can’t. . 

“Maybe,” Lailah says, kneeling at the edge of the pile of seeds and dirt that Sorey is currently sorting through. He’s resisted the urge, so far, to dump out the entire pan on the witch’s floor and sort through that way. The hem of her crimson and white dress drags in the dirt, but remains unstained: clearly some of her ambient magic affects her clothing, as well. “You could ask me for help.” 

“I can’t,” Sorey says, stubbornly, remembers Mikleo as mist and water in his arms, blank colorless eyes that don’t know him, don’t know anyone. “You heard her - you helping me is _cheating.”_ Edna (or so Lailah had called her) had been clear - getting Lailah’s help on this was _cheating_ , and he can’t afford to fail. He can’t afford to be thrown out with nothing. 

“I’ve known Edna a long time,” Lailah says, calmly, looking up at him. “This isn’t the first time I’ve brought a wizard, or a mortal, to see her for counsel, and I’ve _helped_ them with whatever trial she set. She’s more willing to help then she acts, as long as her petitioners are willing to _try._ ” 

Sorey looks down at the pile of seeds: he’s _trying_ , but the pile is large, and he’s sorting too slowly. This is his wish: he needs to do the work for it. “Thanks, but I’ve got this, I think.” 

“If you change your mind, I’ll be here.” Lailah tells him. “I’m here to help you as much as I can, Sorey, but there’s something you should understand. There are things that I cannot tell you about, or I will unmake myself.” 

“...Understood,” Sorey says. “I’ll be careful when I ask questions, then.” 

Lailah laughs, brightly. “Thank you for understanding,” she says. 

The sound of the front door being flung open haphazardly interrupts Sorey in the middle of what he’s about to say. The footsteps don’t sound right, either: the witch walks either lightly or not at all, from what little he’s seen of her, and they’re too heavy.

“Edna? You here?” a deep voice calls, just before a tall, shirtless man with long, pale hair steps into view. The curving, white lines of arcane-looking tattoos spiral across his dark skin, but Sorey can’t place the exact meaning behind the symbols. After a moment or two of study, he’s able to pick out something like wards of protection, here and there. “-Oho. What do we have here?” he grins, wide. “Some poor unlucky mortal, trying to earn her favor? Might just be out of luck - I’ve been trying to win her over for _years_ , and it ain’t happened yet.” 

“Uh, have you tried not just walking in?” Sorey suggests, helpfully, glancing up briefly from the seeds he’s sorting. 

“No can do, kid.” the man shrugs. “I’ve got a job to do and a promise to keep, and you know how it is. Edna’s a lovely girl, but she makes herself so hard to find when I need to find her. Any idea where she’s gone?” 

“Sorry, I don’t.” Sorey says, and rubs the back of his head. 

Lailah tilts her head. “It’s been a long time, Zaveid.” she says. 

“And you’re as beautiful as ever, Lailah.” the man says, trying to put his arm around her, though she neatly sidesteps him just before golden eyes shift their focus onto Sorey. “So _you’re_ the new wizard contracted to the Firebird,” 

A crackle of warning hisses down Sorey’s spine, sharp and static: without thinking about it, he throws himself to the side, just in time to dodge the crack of a whip hissing through the air, just where he’d been moments before. 

“Hey! What are you _doing_?!” Sorey yelps in surprise, just as the pale-haired man drops into a fighting stance. 

“C’mon, wizard,” he says. “I want to see what you’re capable of.” 

“Draw my sword,” Lailah says, her voice clear: she’s at Sorey’s side in a moment, paper talismans in her hands. 

“I don’t actually know how to fight with a sword,” Sorey confesses, more than a little ruefully: his grandfather, despite being an avatar of Perun, had never taught him _(or anyone else in the village)_ how to fight, and while he’d gone hunting, it’d always been with a bow. He _has_ a bow, it’s the one weapon besides a knife that he’s any good with, but it’d do him no good in close quarters like this. 

“I can lend you my skill,” Lailah says. “You aren’t the first wizard I’ve contracted with who couldn’t fight with a sword,” 

Sorey dodges again, just barely, and remembers Michael, who had looked awkward even just _holding_ Lailah’s sword - he can’t imagine that the older man would have ever learned how to fight on his own. 

“Right,” he gasps, drawing the sword. “Go on, but after this, _teach_ me how to actually fight.” 

“Of course,” Lailah trills, brightly, and the shadow of wings flare behind her for a moment, iridescent feathers fluttering to the ground, slowly, before they burn themselves to ash. The phantom sensation of feathers and flame brush across Sorey’s skin, sink into his bones again, just as flame wreathes the slender, silver ritual blade. 

“If that’s how you want to play it,” the man shrugs, coils his whip at his side. “Then let’s go!” For a moment, Sorey sees his hands and hair glitter with the echo of gold, before his body slumps unconscious to the ground, spectral horse rearing back above it. How could a horse, even an _astral_ horse, fit into this room?! It was pretty cool, but _seriously_?

“Sorey, watch out,” Lailah says, fanning out her paper charms in her hands. “He’s a _kresnik,_ and they don’t just rely on throwing garlic. _”_

“Aren’t they supposed to hunt _vampires?”_ Sorey throws himself back to avoid the _kresnik’s_ hooves, barely managing to not go crashing into the wall. There’s not a lot of space “Last I checked, I wasn’t one.” 

“Vampires, evil spirits, demons, wizards that break the balance - I don’t just deal in vampires.” the _kresnik_ drawls. 

It’s more than a little weird to Sorey to see, to feel, how his body moves, as he slashes, as he parries: this skill isn’t his own, but merely lent. It’s not quite instinct, because _he_ doesn’t know the right timing, the footwork involved in this dizzying dance of blades, but it’s something beyond himself. He _does_ notice when he accidentally kicks the pan of seeds, knocks it over and scatters seeds and dirt all over the floor, but doesn’t have time to do much more than wince. 

“I’m not going to break the balance,” Sorey protests. 

“That’s what the _last_ one said,” the man says, and his hooves come down heavy. Sorey can’t quite manage to parry or get out of the way, but suddenly, the man’s knocked aside, in a flash of shimmering blue light and the flowing sound of water running over rocks, the river’s thawing torrent in the spring. 

“The hell was that?” the _kresnik_ curses, nearly slips on the seeds underfoot. “That’s not recent magic, boy, and none of _yours.”_

And then a parasol hits the _kresnik’s_ spectral form with a sharp crack, the astral horse dissolving just before the man groans from the floor. The witch scowls and hits him again for good measure. 

“You’re such a nuisance.” The witch says, and then turns and hits Sorey with her parasol, hard enough to knock him off his feet. “And _you._ Did anyone never teach you to _not_ to fight in someone’s house?” 

Sorey yelps in pain, but manages to stand up, sheathing the Firebird’s sword. “S-sorry.” he says, more than a little sheepishly, and rubbed his head. It hadn’t been him who had started the fight, but he probably shouldn’t have _stayed_ in the kitchen if he could help it. 

The blond witch grabs the unconscious _kresnik’s_ collar and points to a broom and dustpan sitting in the corner. “I’ll deal with _him.”_ she says, her voice still utterly even. “You clean up this mess. And don’t help, Lailah. I’m tired of you cleaning up after wizards.” 

A moment later, she sinks through the earth, dragging the man with her: Sorey feels sorry for him as he picks up the broom and gets to work sweeping up the dirt and seeds that got tracked through the kitchen. He’s probably going to have to sort them all out again when the witch gets back: the tedium doesn’t thrill him, but he’d sort these seeds for the next hundred, for the next thousand years, sort until his fingers are worn down to the bone, if it means there’s even the slightest chance that Mikleo will live again. 

“Do you want help with that, Sorey?” Lailah asks, as he begins to sweep dirt into the dustpan. 

“Thanks, but I’ve got it, I think.” Sorey says. “Don’t worry, I know how to use a broom:” 

“That’s not what I’m worried about.” Lailah sighs. “Don’t tire yourself out, too soon.” 

***

It’s sometime later before the witch returns, entirely alone: Sorey has no idea what she did with the _kresnik_ , but isn’t entirely sure that he wants to ask. Hopefully she didn’t just leave him entombed alive in stone: _hopefully_ , anyway, he’s sure that she wouldn’t be so cruel. 

The witch’s eyes, ancient and still as stone, settle on him. 

“Since you at least _tried_ to deal with the nuisance,” she says, settling her parasol back over her shoulder. “I’ll be nice even though you failed at sorting the seeds.“ 

“Really?” Sorey grins in relief, despite how tired he is. “Thanks!” 

“You’re hopeless.” the witch says, dryly. “To be properly respectful, you should have said ‘Thank you for your generosity, Lady Edna.’ Remember that for next time, but get on with your question. What advice did you come to my door for?” 

Sorey takes a moment to collect his thoughts: he knows what he wants to say, he’d gone over it in his head over and over again on his way here, but trying to distill the tangle of emotions and urgency down into words is difficult, to say the least, and he’s certain that he’s not entirely succeeding. “My best friend died-was murdered - two years ago, and came back as a _rusalka._ I didn’t really think things through and tried to wish him back to life, but my wish went wrong. ” 

Lailah interjects, briefly. “Sorey’s friend-” and the trill in her voice is an understatement. “was a wizard, and his death-wish protects Sorey.” 

Edna shakes her head. “ _Wizards_.” she mutters. “Geh. No wonder you pacted with this one. A worst tangle of fates I haven’t seen in centuries.” the little witch walks around Sorey, studying him with her flat, emotionless gaze. It’s really hard to read her, and it’s almost unnerving. “So you’re looking for a way to bring him back to life, aren’t you, that isn’t your wizard’s magic?” 

“Yeah, that’s right.” Sorey says. “Please. Can you help me?” 

“That kind of magic comes from the realms of the gods.” Edna says. “Unfortunately, I can’t help you.” 

Sorey feels his heart sink. “You can’t?” he asks. If the witch of the mountains couldn’t help him...no, he wouldn’t give up. If she couldn’t help him, there had to be someone else out there who could: he just had to find them.

“No. My brother is the one who knows that secret, and he never taught me, though he spent millennia promising that he would.” she snorts. “One excuse after another. ‘Oh, I’ll teach you when you get a little older. Oh, I’ll teach you when I come back.’ And he _never_ did teach me.” 

“Is Eizen traveling again, Edna?” Lailah asks. “Do you know where he’s gone?” 

Edna shakes her head. “Oh, no, he’s _here.”_ she says. “But he can’t help you, either.” 

“Why?” Sorey asks. Silence, awkward silence, hangs in the air. 

After a moment, Edna walks out of the kitchen, towards the door. “Follow me. And pay attention.” 

A question hangs on Sorey’s lips but he follows after her, with Lailah on his heels. “Where are we going?” 

“You wanted to know why my brother can’t help you.” Edna reminds him, sharply, as she steps out into the night. “You know what a _zmeu_ is, don’t you, wizard?” 

“Yeah,” Sorey says. “I’ve read about them.” 

A moment later, Sorey yelps, as the witch pokes him with her parasol. “Books aren’t going to help you here.” Edna tells him. “My brother’s turned into a dragon.” 

A long, rumbling roar echoes from somewhere over the horizon, distant but still somehow too close: there is nothing and no one in that sound, nothing but mindless instinct. A shiver runs down Sorey’s spine as he’s reminded of the unthinking blankness in Mikleo’s eyes. 

“And my brother,” says the witch who looks like a young girl, “is not so nice as a _zmeu.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> = yayyyy a new chapter. finally! hopefully my next won't take so long. hahahahah...  
> \- hi Zaveid.  
> \- combat scenes, whyyyyyy do I hate myself. 
> 
> Glossary:  
>  _zmeu_ : a kind of Romanian dragon that's known for hoarding gold/treasure and kidnapping beautiful young princesses to marry before inevitably being killed by Fat-Frumos, who was basically the Romanian Prince Charming, the ideal embodiment of the princely young man. Not Nice At All.


	10. IMPORTANT NOTICE

You all might have already guessed from how long it's been since any of my fics have updated, but I'm very sorry to say that this and _with fate unyielding_ are on indefinite hiatus. I've started grad school and a Ph.D program, and I would rather use my limited time to work on my tabletop fanfic and original work. So I'm taking a step back from Tales fandom in general. 

Thank you guys for enjoying what I've done. Maybe someday I'll find the drive to update again, but I cannot and will not promise any kind of regular updates.

**Author's Note:**

> \- I will probably put in a glossary once the Slavic myth terms start coming in more.   
> \- I have no idea what I'm doing: hopefully this won't be too OOC. Hopefully I haven't failed at that already.   
> \- So I killed my favorite character off in the prologue. That probably gives away what kind of author I am.


End file.
